It’s time for We Are Social’s Monday Mashup, a quick round up of research, news and case studies that caught our eye over the last week and we thought were worth sharing. Here’s our pick of some of the web’s finest.

Maybe it just troubles me as the logical conclusion of an initiative like this is that you don’t need agencies anymore, you simply crowdsource the creative ideas cheaply and then partner with production houses.

The post kicked off a lengthy discussion in the comments section, so get a cup of tea and start scrolling. It’s worth the read.

Twitter has been working furiously to make its website better by rolling out the new Retweet button, Lists, and Geolocation features. As Twitter loses ground in its home market (and Facebook keeps moving ‘further and further ahead’) the question is whether the new changes will be enough to reverse this downward trend?

LinkedIn works with Twitter, and vice versaLast week LinkedIn and Twitter announced a partnership that allows your LinkedIn status to show up as a tweet when you set it, or for a tweet to also appear as your LinkedIn status. The rationale? “Because when you’re trying to get something done, you want Twitter and LinkedIn to work together”.

In effect, the move is meant to save you time while you promote your professional identity across the web and cut out having to login on multiple platforms to share the same status/message. And crucially, you can be selective about what appears in your LinkedIn profile i.e. you can set LinkedIn so that all your tweets appear, or only those with the hashtag #in.

Few people in PR, it seems, have considered the way that SideWiki will change the lives of beleaguered PR folk. In time, this tool will significantly change the way brands strategise, think and exist. SideWiki is going to challenge PR by providing the masses with the tool for the ultimate expression of people power, something uncontainable that will need constant monitoring.

A sweeping statement? Yes, but read on.

Did CoTweet just take Twitter’s business model, and future customers?
Twitter’s usefulness and exceptional growth are as legendary as its lack of revenue stream and business model. The key question here: “what happens if Twitter takes too long and third parties take over the market?”

CoTweet might be doing just that, and the startup has recently launched a paid for service to allow clients to “reach and engage customers using Twitter.” Econsultancy examines the diminishing market opportunity for Twitter, as 3rd parties like CoTweet develop direct commercial relationships with brands and advanced tools for them to manage their relationships online.

People open to marketing in social media
This is reassuring news for those who, say, work for social media agencies.

The study found an immense opportunity for gaining customers and growing sales so long as marketers “communicate relevant messages in consumers’ language and on their terms”.

The Connected Brands Index
Last week iCrossing introduced the Connected Brands Index, some research out of the US designed to measure a brand’s effectiveness online “not just on their own properties, but also across search and social media”.

According to iCrossing, a successful online brand is made up of five key attributes – visibility, usefulness, usability, desirability, and engagement – which can be measured by looking at 65 different metrics.

This research does not tell you what the most connected brands on the web are, but looks at the top 10 global brands according to the Interbrand study and should serve as future reference for benchmarking. Download the full research here.